If you are, or have been, at one time or another an avid gardener; or at least you attempted to keep a yard in order so the neighbors don’t call the agriculture authorities you particularly may identify with my story. I have spent a lifetime haplessly watching my gardens turn to brambles and my lawns pass to geometric confusions of creeping charlie and crab grass, Gunderman & Finger Millet for you gardener types.
After a wondrous visit to the Rocky Mountains a few weeks ago, we embarked on the Great American Road Trip across the continent. I made a detour off I-90 to South Dakotas’ most wonderful oddity, the 43,500 sq. ft. Corn Palace. Paul (18) was not sorry to set aside his study of the 1848 Democratic Movements of Central Europe and Daniel (14) was positively gleeful to pause “Clash of Clans” in mid-game to see seed aesthetics on a monumental scale. My wife Christiane thought we were simply switching drivers. But this stop turned out to be more than a minor pause in our journey. The exterior of this entire building is covered with mosaics constructed of kernels of corn in a splendid array of colors. It is a wondrous example of seed art, a specialty of the upper Midwest. It is not to be missed if you travel to the Dakotas.
Each year the entire building is stripped and reseeded with a different theme. That year’s theme being rock and roll, Elvis, Willie Nelson, and other rockers adorned the exterior. The interior boasted yet more of this native-fauna-artistic brilliance on the walls of what turned out to be the local high school’s basketball arena. While I was marveling at the jumbo-tron sized mosaics, I found myself wondering if these gargantuan portraits might unfairly distract the visiting squads as they played the Mitchell, South Dakota “Kernels” basketball team.
Christiane did the logical thing, she bought us ears of corn at the refreshment stand. After all, we were in the Corn Palace, the world’s Mecca to Maize. But even at this epicenter of Americana, we could not capture the true rapture of this yellow food stuff. It was now late in the growing season, the corn picked who knows when, ears shucked early that morning and then microwaved (truly an unforgivable sin) which rendered the corn at the Corn Palace merely soft and mealy.
There was one year when all things were good and right in the world, including our own corn. It was 2004, and we had recently moved to our house on Otis Avenue in St. Paul, Minnesota. We inherited a massive patch of raspberries and blackberries in the backyard. Our granola and pancakes from that year still linger in my epicurean memory.
I planted a vegetable garden out our side door and every eatable delight flourished. I don’t have to tell you the miracle of home grown tomatoes, four different varieties mind you. Comparing those with the taste of store-bought tomatoes is like comparing a child’s finger painting to a Monet. Our cucumbers were firm and tasted like a bright sunrise. Even the lettuce snapped when you ate it. The prodigious pole beans were as full of flavor as my grandmother’s from our Missouri family farm. The bazillion herbs I grew flavored everything we cooked that summer. Ah, but it is the corn which must receive special mention. If angels in heaven planted rows of corn, they would surely have been jealous of my evenly paced rows which grew well over seven-feet tall.
The boys were still little then, perhaps three and five. Each evening, Christiane made a miraculous salad from the garden. I’d put the pot on the boil. Paul, Daniel and I stood at the side door, primed and anxious as thoroughbreds stamping their hoofs in the starting gate. When Christiane announced the water was a bubbling, we were off. The dash across the gravel driveway, perhaps only took a second, the step into the vegetable garden even quicker. We pulled the ears clean of the stalks, pivoted, and greedily carried the bundles of ears to the house. Little Daniel proudly carried at least one ear, each corn stalk must have looked like the walls of Babylon to his small eyes. We were back in the door in a snap, a quick shuck on the back porch and into the pot with each golden marvel for three minutes and thirty eight seconds NEVER a second longer.
Then to the table, bathed in butter, sprinkled with salt, only I adding a bit of fresh pepper from the grinder. Somehow I also managed to get medium-rare burgers or marinated chicken from the grill still hot on our plates and Christiane added boiled red potatoes (more butter and seasoned with our fresh herbs). As I said, that was the year that all was good and right in the world.
Sadly my successes as a farmer seemed to erode over the next few years. The corn was soon assaulted by the deer, the lettuce and tomatoes by the squirrels,rabbits and raccoons. My odd-ball next door neighbor Hal even uprooted some of my herbs and threw them into the garbage claiming they were noxious plant species. Hal was story in himself.
Even after I put up a fence to keep the critters and Hal at bay, my crops came up looking sickly. Finally, I decided to wipe the slate clean and start from scratch. The next spring I dug deep into the plot. During the excavation I found hunks of discarded iron, tin cans, sheets of plastic tarps, nails, a rusty hammer and saw, roof shingles and massive hunks of railroad ties soaked in creosote. Yes, until then, my family and I spent whole summers ingesting carcinogens!
I churned fresh black dirt, manure and ash into the soil and by the end had a weed-free plot to rival any rich Mississippi River bottom-land. Seed catalogs became nightly reading. I even cleaned the cobwebs of our long ignored root cellar. I had visions of rows of Ball jars of canned green beans and pint upon pint of raspberry jam. I may have even had the Minnesota Extension Service on speed dial. I planted everything afresh, but life chasing the almighty dollar stepped in that summer. I barely kept up with cutting the lawn; was only able to attack the creeping Charlie only every three weeks. Christiane managed to salvage the pole beans, a bit of lettuce and the hearty rhubarb planted by the people who owned the house previously. It’s hard to kill rhubarb.
Never again did we experience that first precious bite of homegrown brilliance. The snap of the small light-yellow kernels of mid-July corn soaked in butter, the explosive freshness of the perfect ear of Midwestern wonder, the food of the gods. But isn’t that the beauty and gift of memory? What once was, are the times to be cherished,tucked away, in a special place only to be brought to mind in fleeting wondrous moments.
Creative Credits
- Written by
- Curt Milburn
- Image courtesy
- Curt Milburn
- Retouching
- Brianna Kish
